Considerations on the need for electricity storage requirements: Power versus energy

Different storage technologies enable an increasing share of variable renewable generation in the electricity system by reducing the temporal mismatch between generation and demand. Two storage ratings are essential to time-shift delivery of electricity to loads: electric power, or instantaneous electricity flow [W], and electric energy, or power integrated over time [Wh]. An optimal storage portfolio is likely composed of multiple technologies, each having specific power and energy ratings. This paper derives and explains the link between the shape of the time-varying demand and generation profiles and the amount of desirably installed storage capacity, both energy and power. An analysis is performed for individual storage technologies first, showing a link between the necessary power and energy capacity and the demand and generation profile. Then combinations of storage technologies are analyzed to reveal their mutual interaction in a storage portfolio. Results show an increase in desirability for storage technologies with low cost power ratings when the mismatch between generation and demand occurs in daily to weekly cycles. Storage technologies with low cost energy ratings are preferred when this mismatch occurs in monthly to seasonal cycles. The findings of this work can help energy system planners and policy makers to explain results from generation expansion planning studies and to isolate the storage benefits accountable to temporal arbitrage in broader electricity storage studies.